Porous Basalt Field Walls

Porous Basalt Field Walls is an original illustration set in Jeju Island, South Korea. It lies in the subtropics, where the climate is humid subtropical — hot summers, no dry season.

Low black basalt walls weave like dark ribbons around small fields of barley and winter vegetables, their rounded porous stones stacked with many visible gaps. Coastal grasses bend in one direction, loose soil stays inside the plots, and a low volcanic cone rises beyond a strip of silver sea.

Why are these field walls deliberately full of holes?

Solid walls would take the full force of typhoon winds and topple, but loosely stacked lava stone lets some air bleed through while reducing the damaging gust behind it. The same walls hold light volcanic soil, slow evaporation, and use stones cleared from the fields themselves. Porous basalt, wind-bent crops, a volcanic cone, and the island coast combine into Jeju's batdam system.

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